Contested Memories Find Common Ground In 'The Storied South'
by NPR STAFF
August 10, 2013 7:41 AM
For four decades, William Ferris tracked down some of the most inspirational artists and historians of the American South. He sat down with Eudora Welty, Alice Walker, Pete Seeger, Bobby Rush and Alex Haley, capturing their reflections on tape and their images on camera.
The results of his work have now been published as a new book, The Storied South: Voices of Writers and Artists. The book is a bittersweet love song to the muddy rivers and rolling fields of Oklahoma, Mississippi and the rest of the South — the languid afternoons, the constant static of buzzing insects, and the taut undercurrent of racial tension that produced some of the greatest novels, paintings and music of the 20th century. All of it is heard through the voices of the artists themselves — like Roots author Alex Haley, who describes the South as "a place of hands, it's a place of touch, of caress, of less of slapping, of knocking people down, it's a softer, sweeter culture."
Ferris tells NPR's Celeste Headlee that he sees the book as one large narrative. "Each of those speakers, in his or her own way, wrestles with, is tortured by, is in love with a place called the South," he says. "And I sometimes think of the book as my way of getting all these people to a common table of conversation."
On confliction visions of the South
"What this really does is to look at what is called contested memory, the different memories of the South in black and white worlds. Eudora Welty grew up in a family in which books were everywhere, and she was encouraged to read. Alice Walker grew up in a family that encouraged her to read, but had to beg, borrow and steal books from white families to bring home for the children to learn to read. And yet they both began to write about the South. And Robert Penn Warren, who was America's first poet laureate, wrestled with race throughout his life, and wrote a book at the end of his career, Who Speaks for the Negro? in which he interviewed Malcolm X and Aaron Henry and many of the civil rights leaders, looking at how race shapes our nation in such a powerful way. And certainly that continues today."
On the way the Southern landscape changed storytelling
"In a way, that is a key to every one of these voices. Sam Gilliam describes going back to his home and looking at the Ohio River, which often flooded. And his paintings, he says, when they're large and violent, are inspired by the waters of that river. William Eggleston's dramatic color photography captures the deep reds and yellows of the Mississippi Delta, where he grew up and later photographed, in such a powerful way. So place shapes every voice in this book, in a distinctive way."
On why the South preserves its history through storytelling
"Stories are our oldest way of communicating knowledge, of passing on traditions, and Southerners have a gift for that. And when you ask a Southerner to answer a question, they will tell a story. And embedded in that story is the information that they feel is the answer to the question. And so when I asked each of these figures about their novel or their painting, or their song or their photograph, what they did was tell me a story, and it was a powerful story in every case. Complicated, interesting, and opening doors of understanding about the South."
Excerpt: The Storied South
The song "We Shall Overcome" is now known worldwide. How it came to be is a long story. In 1903 Reverend Charles Tindley had a big church in Philadelphia. He wrote a song that went, "I'll overcome some day. I'll overcome some day. If in my heart I do not yield, I'll overcome some day."
He put out a book called Gospel Pearls [1921] and started to use the phrase gospel music. Some of his students, like Lucie Campbell, became gospel songwriters. Somewhere between 1903 and 1945 "I'll Overcome" got a quite different melody and a quite different rhythm. "I'll overcome. I'll overcome. I'll overcome someday. If in my heart I do not yield, I'll overcome someday."
Some people say, "Deep in my heart, I do believe, I'll overcome someday."
It was a well-known gospel song in this fast version throughout North Carolina and South Carolina. In 1945 or 1946, 300 tobacco workers, mostly black and mostly women, went on strike in Charleston, South Carolina. People took turns on the picket line. Music-loving people are always going to sing. They sang hymns most of the time on the picket line. Once in a while they would sing a union song, but mostly they sang hymns.
Lucille Simmons loved to sing "I'll Overcome," but she changed it to, "We Will Overcome."
She loved to sing it the slow way. You know, any hymn can be sung long meter or short meter. She liked to sing "We Will Overcome" in long meter. She had a beautiful voice, and they said, "Oh, here is Lucille. We are going to hear that long, slow song."
She would sing it, "We will overcome. / We will overcome ... / We'll get higher wages ... / We'll get shorter hours."
Zilphia Horton, a white woman, was an organizer from the Highlander Folk School. She comes down to help, and she is completely captivated by this song. Zilphia had a lovely alto voice and an accordion. She taught the song to me on one of her fundraising trips up North. I liked it. I found myself singing it and teaching it to audiences. "We will overcome. / We will overcome."
I added some verses. "We shall live in peace, / the whole wide world around ... / We will walk hand in hand."
Out in Los Angeles, I met a young fellow named Guy Carawan, and I taught it to him. Guy Carawan's family had come from North Carolina. He wanted to get acquainted with the South, as I had done. Next thing you know, he was helping the Highlander Folk School with workshops. In 1960, they had an all- South workshop on the use of music in the freedom movement at the Highlander Center. So Guy sings this song. He gave it the Motown beat, the famous soul beat.
I had changed the "will" to "shall" — me and my Harvard education. "We shall." I think it opens up the mouth better, and we changed the rhythm. "We shall overcome. / We shall overcome."
Within one month, it spread through the South. It was the favorite song at the founding convention of SNCC three weeks later in April 1960 in Raleigh, North Carolina, where people came from all through the South.
Dr. King heard me sing the song three or four years before. He came to the Highlander Center, and Miles Horton, Zilphia's husband, says, "Pete, won't you come down and lead some songs. We can't have a gathering here without music."
I sang "We Shall Overcome." Anne Braden later told me that she drove Dr. King to Kentucky the next day and remembers King in the back seat saying, "'We shall overcome.' That song really sticks with you, doesn't it?"
The song means different things to different people. In Selma, Alabama, a lot of people were singing it because they wanted to overcome Sheriff Jim Clark, who was beating people up and throwing them in jail. When I am singing it, the most important word is "we" because the human race is either all going to make it, or we are all not going to make it. In my more optimistic moments, I think we shall overcome.
From The Storied South: Voices of Writers and Artists by William Ferris. Copyright 2013 by William Ferris. Excerpted by permission of the University of North Carolina Press.
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